by catt dahman
When the world went to hell and Len faced zombies, he saw Andre every time he put one down. When he faced Raiders who raped and ate people, he saw Andre and was happy to kill them in a painful manner. It was justice, but it was vengeance, and it could eat him alive if he allowed it.
He knew in Florida that the zoms got his parents, sister, and Sami, or maybe the bombs took them. He wished he could tell her he was sorry, but he wasn’t. He felt it was a just thing to rid the world of a drug-dealing woman-beating-child-touching piece of trash. K-Man was collateral damage.
When his group formed the US Militia, he tried to be justice for what had to be done.
In Hopetown, he led, but he always carried that one bit of sadness with him that Tammy hated him for: killing Andre even though her life improved tenfold.
One day, Zane came in, a boy they dreamed of at the same time they dreamed of Pascal, the evil child with a withered face and one cold eye.
If Pascal were dark evil, then Zane was light and goodness. Len knew the dreams were real since he had them, too, but he didn’t believe the child could do any magic or was so special. Zane was just a good child whom they could rally around and bond with. But then he motioned for Len to lean down so he could whisper into his ear. “Tammy, she forgave you,” was all he said.
Len felt his legs go to jelly. No way could the boy know her name and anything about her, but he smiled at Len, and Len felt a decade wash away, shadows vanish, and a weight disappear, as he felt bathed in pure light and happiness. Len knew Tammy forgave him but was ashamed of how she lived before and didn’t know what to say.
Every day, Tammy prayed and thanked God for Len’s actions, and when Len was deployed, she prayed for his safety. He was her hero, but she felt unworthy, and she forgave the murder long ago. He knew this all at once, which gave him the greatest peace imaginable.
That’s how Len became a believer in good magic that man forgot long ago when he invented weapons and then technology. Humans have tremendous power inside them but have no idea and no clue how to use that power to do great things.
Zane knew he had it, and he did use it a few times, once to prove his ability to nonbelievers, once to keep some good men from dying, and once for vengeance on some very bad men.
Len saw a connection. He did well, but also he did something that looked wrong out of vengeance, but then God of the Old Testament had to do the same a few times.
That was how Len Bernhart, former agnostic, decided that God was in each of us and that we all could do magic, whether it was running fast or singing or knowing a sister forgave her brother.
7
Adam
When he awoke, he ate, drank, and peed off to the side of the tree house and then sat with binoculars, watching his house. His grandmother was infected with Red, and when he was sure of that, he stopped watching and lay in the tree house, thinking the situation over. He didn’t want to see her turn.
At the junior high, where he wasted his days, something really cool happened a few weeks back, which was strange because nothing cool ever happened there.
His English teacher, who wasn't so bad, knew a writer, a really published author, who wrote science fiction. The teacher arranged for her to come to Adam's school and talk to the students about "Following Your Dreams" which was lame. But the writer was different than Adam expected when she came into his English class to meet the students. First of all, her name was Chase Malone, she was a blonde with green eyes, a combination that Adam loved, and she was smart and sensitive and not a total nerd as he expected.
He made a fool of himself in front of the whole class because Adam was the class clown and the class smart-ass; he asked intelligent questions and hogged all of her attention.
It was really neat how she smiled at him and some of the other guys in his class, the ones who were considered by all the girls to be the most popular, good-looking boys who gave Adam dirty looks. He even skipped lunch to talk to her, even telling her about his grandmother and relatives, trying to get custody of him. She listened, not pretended to listen like most adults, but she cared, really cared about things he said. She told him about some of her stories, which sounded very interesting.
She didn’t have kids, and she wasn’t married. She secretly told him she wasn’t even fond of kids. They chuckled about that.
They sat outside under a tree, talking about all kinds of stuff, and Adam decided that he might be a writer one day. He was shocked to realize that it was 3:30, and school was out; he accidentally skipped all of his afternoon classes. He was going to be so expelled for that. Chase was cool about the “skipping classes” and said that she would personally talk to his teacher and the principal and get him excused.
That was nice of her, he thought, especially since she wasn’t thrilled with kids.
She wrote about strange, impossible things, so maybe she'd know what to do about zombies, too. This made no sense, but it didn't make sense to go to her for help.
When Adam reached home, he looked her for address in the phone book and found C.F. Malone. He didn’t know why he looked her up; he would never have the guts to call, but he wanted to find her in the phone book. There had to be a reason that he met her and looked her up; she knew things.
While standing on the ground, he adjusted his backpack and began to walk, making sure he was quiet and looked around before he walked into a street. He paused to vomit when he came upon a woman lying in her yard, her stomach opened, and her legs and arms removed, stripped of flesh and tossed beside her.
He thought it was a woman, anyway, with long dark hair, but her face was too chewed on to be sure. When she rolled her head his way, she let out a low moan; she had no eyes and couldn’t see him, so he vomited and moved on past her, watching his back, holding back the scream he felt in his throat.
Sometimes he saw dried puddles of blood or a bad car wreck, but no one was left in the mangled cars. Just blood. At one house, a man tapped at his window from inside, his eyes milky white, pajamas blood-caked and filthy with waste, just hungrily watching.
Adam picked up his pace. Maybe people saw him leaving the neighborhood, but no one said a word. That was fine because he didn’t want any company, only wanted to get where he was headed.
At a house with an open garage, he grabbed a bicycle and didn’t feel too much like a thief as he used it to move faster. He skidded to a stop when he saw a girl close to his age, dragging a mutilated body out to the front of her house where a few bodies already lay. She saw him before he could duck.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” Adam asked, “What’re you doing?”
“I have a theory, the blood and rot will at least keep them busy, and maybe they won’t bother me in the house.”
“Oh, well, that makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose. Who are they?”
“My mom, dad, sister, and brother.”
“Oh,” replied Adam although he didn’t think she looked very upset, but maybe she was in shock or something. “They all had Red except you?”
“I’m adopted,” Hannah told him, not answering the other question.
Adam thought. “That must have been horrible, having to defend yourself. Are you okay? Any bites?”
“Not a one. I’m doing pretty well, all things considered,” Hannah told him.
“I guess so. Wow. That is really the shits.”
“I am about to eat something. You want lunch?” she asked; she was starved, despite the bad smells.
His stomach rumbled. “Okay.” And he introduced himself.
“Mom made this stew right before…you know…the bad things happened. It’s nutritious and will ruin as soon as the power goes.”
“Thanks.”
Hannah heated the thick stew on the stove, asking him where he was going. To his own shock, he told her, and she nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense; I hope she’s not a Red.”
“Me, too.” The kitchen was fairly clean; here and there were smears of blood, but Adam didn’t say anything for fear
of upsetting the girl. “You could come along. I guess,” said Adam.
“I appreciate that, Adam, but I think I’ll stay on my own a while and watch what comes from this. Even though it’s horrific and life altering, there is an interesting aspect to this. How will people behave, and what will the Red Zeds do now? I guess I want to stay here where I feel safe and just observe.”
“Like a human ant farm?”
She laughed. “How astute. Exactly.”
“You talk smart; sometimes you sound kind of English. Is it hard to talk that way?”
She laughed and replied, “No. And I do like to play at accents when I have the bloody chance, you know.” They stopped talking to eat the stew. Hannah brought out a Pepsi for each for them. “You finished?” she asked finally as they both sat back with full bellies.
“Very. That was good. Thanks for sharing. What else are you gonna do now?”
“I’m going to check the neighbors and see who is alive and who isn’t and gather some more food in cans; it’ll keep me busy. I hope to find a gun and bullets, or a sword would be even better. I will try to figure it out; I learn fast.
She gave him a six-pack of Pepsis to take with him so he would have caffeine and sugar as he traveled. The extra weight in his stuffed backpack wasn’t fun, but he knew even lukewarm, the drinks would taste fine later as he became thirsty.
He waved goodbye, leaving her to her excursions. He almost ran into a car when he heard gunshots from one street over. Heart racing, he pedaled away as he saw some men and some bloody people fighting on a lawn.
Looking for the address took a while, but he finally found her neighborhood; using his map, he eased into the curving stone driveway. The house was made of stone but wasn’t fancy; a formidable iron fence was all around the property. He rang the buzzer at the fence. Was she a Red? Would she think he was creepy for coming here?
“This is a surprise," she said as she answered the buzzer, letting him inside the fence and asking him to join her at the house. She had a smile that normally would have made his pulse speed up to about a hundred miles an hour, and she looked good in her jeans and Polo, making him aware that he did not shower or clean up at all.
“Come in." She was inviting him into her home, something that normally would have made him delirious with excitement.
"Am I bothering you?”
"Not at all. I'm surprised you're here. Most fans don't track me down, especially with a pandemic going on, but then you seemed pretty interested in scary stuff…fiction…and here we are, and it isn’t fiction at all, but real," she said as she smiled at him, a little unsure what to think, but he had the look of a traumatized person.
This kid looked scared.
Chase was puzzled, curious, and only a bit bothered, which amused her. Was she beginning to like kids, or did this one just break through her defenses? Funny, was been drawn to Adam even though she was the first to admit she was not a kid-friendly kind of person. They got on her nerves fast, but he was funny and seemed sad beneath his fierce false bravado. He reminded her of herself when she was a kid.
"I don't know who else to turn to but you. You write science fiction, so you're used to strange stuff, I guess,” he said as he sat in one of the leather chairs. Chase was sure he was a shade paler than his normally olive-skin color.
He was a good-looking young man with dark hair and soft brown, expressive, eyes that were full of intelligence and a mischievous twinkle. His smile was one that lit up the room and probably next year would cause many high school girls’ hearts to miss a beat. He was taller than she was, about five feet ten and looked physically strong.
Why was he here? She asked him point blank, and Adam related the entire story to her. “So where do I go now, and where are others going? What do we do? I met a girl on the way here who was putting her dead family outside her door in hopes the smell or something would keep the zoms from bothering her.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Would it work?”
“No clue. Technically, while it should to a point, they stop eating a person when the person dies…unless the Zoms are really starved and locked up with the dead…I guess…I mean, according to the books and movies I have seen, but those were dead people coming back, and this is an infection.”
“They aren’t dead?”
Chase shrugged, “I can’t say with total accuracy one way or the other since I haven’t seen any except on television. I don’t think anyone really knows except what we heard before the news all went south.”
Adam lit a cigarette, staring at her defiantly.
“How long have you been smoking?”
“Shit, since I was eleven.”
“Gimme one,” she said as she held out her hand.
Adam handed her one and his lighter. She inhaled deeply. “Bad habit.”
“You have no fucking ideas either, do you?” he asked since he felt cheated.
“Bingo. I mean…the movies and books…but in real life…we go by those, or we just wing it. Have you seen any?”
Adam nodded. “On the way over…you can spot them easy…they look about how they do in the movies…gross and bloody; some are torn up; they moan when they see humans, and they are pretty stupid….”
Chase nodded eagerly. “Okay, that is something right there. So we know all that now. And that’s really like the movies and books, so assume the bite is contagious….”
“They said that on TV.”
“I am talking first hand research now. So bites are bad; we shoot them in the head or mangle the head; you did very well at getting firsthand knowledge.”
“I’d just as soon not have seen those damned things,” Adam said. His eyes had shadows beneath them from his stress, “I thought you’d know what to do.”
“We do not go to a mall….” She tilted her head as he groaned at her. “We make sure the doors and windows are safe; no one bitten comes close to us; go for the head. And when they head to places such as schools, the mall, or other places, we sneak away to some country place on a farm.”
Adam just looked at her. She had said ‘us’, and that was better than being alone’; he had a friend who was smart and knew things from movies which was better than being alone and not knowing anything.
“I'll bet you have a dozen girlfriends, don't you?” Chase asked and smiled at Adam as he followed her into the kitchen.
For the first time, Adam smiled. “I’m more like a brother to all the girls. I'm not a great athlete, and I don’t make the best grades, and I’m not popular, either. I hang out with the wrong crowd, I guess because I smoke and cuss too much."
"Yeah, I think I noticed that language problem," she grinned as she replied.
"I wish the girls noticed me more, especially Michelle Landon. She's really fine.''
"Well, she is missing out. I bet when you two are in high school, she’ll wish you'd give her a chance....” Chase cut off as she realized what she was saying. Even if a miracle rescue happened and things were settled, it would be years before things would be like before.
Adam frowned and said, “She’s probably a zed. I don’t wanna kiss a zed.”
“Yep. I can imagine. Well, her loss.”
“Teachers…principal…my grandma…the mailman…shit…I bet everyone is a fucking zom by now.”
“Remind me after this is over that we need to get you to quit smoking and to work on your language. It really sucks, Adam.”
He laughed sadly. “After it’s all over and things are just fine again? Riiight. I’ll stop smoking, stop cussing, and begin turning over a new leaf…like that is gonna happen, Chase…like things are gonna be normal again.”
He was just a scared kid. He had tears in his eyes, and it made her heart ache.
She made tea and laced it with a touch of brandy and lemon for him and her and told him to drink every bit as she did the same.
“They started drinking wine and hot tea back in the days of Marco Polo, well, before then. The Chinese thought that
wine and black tea somehow made a person less likely to get sick. But what they didn’t realize was that boiling the water to make the tea was the key; the boiling made their water safe.”
“That’s logical. Cool fact.”
“I collect useless trivia in my head,” Adam told her.
“We are both exhausted, and we are going to sleep as soon as we secure the downstairs. Then, we will fix you a mattress and bed in the little sitting room off of my bedroom and lock that door. Before you ask, I do have a few handguns and no, you may not touch one until we go over gun safety tomorrow when we are feeling better. We are safe here, and we are going to get a lot of sleep, now.”
“Okay.” He had no argument.
Together they secured every door and window downstairs and took loads of food and supplies upstairs; the work exhausted them even more, but this was mindless work that somehow eased the stress.
While Adam showered, Chase found a box of frozen lasagna, which she cooked in the microwave, and then made a salad, and while he didn’t think he was hungry, he ate like a starved person. Then, they had more tea and more cigarettes.
Chase gave him dirty looks when he lit up but didn’t say a word, and in return, he kept the curse words to a minimum. “I am seriously contributing to your delinquency.”
“Yep, and I can see the judge and jury as they try to eat us after the trial…yanno? I don’t think that’s a big worry right now.”
When he was tucked in, Chase relaxed in her own bed, mulling over the recent events. She didn’t care for children, but she had a chain-smoking, cursing teen to care for now. But then, she also had a world full of zombies, so nothing made any sense anyway. The weird part to her was that she didn’t mind at all; in fact, she felt safe and more at peace than she had felt in days.
This was odd.
8
The Salve
At the National Guard Armory, they had good news in that several trucks were coming in with supplies. Lt. Mike Long was hopeful for the first time. “Come on, we can take in four bitten and then a few who can help us here.”
